


sweet sweet heartkiller

by fallinfinity



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M, Zayn is a vampire, harry is a human, louis is a twat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-20 13:20:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4788701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallinfinity/pseuds/fallinfinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Harry just grinned again and Zayn thought he looked a bit mental and maybe that was part of Harry’s charm, because Zayn’s mouth, lips pressed together in a completely dead and vaguely annoyed way, betrayed him and smiled back."</p><p>or, the one where Zayn's a vampire and Harry isn't, and the pivotal moments in their relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sweet sweet heartkiller

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trishapocalypse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trishapocalypse/gifts).



After a few centuries, everywhere looked like Bradford and Bradford looked like everywhere. The fifteenth century turned to the sixteenth, the seventeenth, and forward, and while technological advancements certainly pushed and prodded and molded Bradford and the rest of the world into a limbo between reality and Twitter, if it looked like a duck and quacked like a duck, the entire world was a flock. Louis had once suggested that Zayn should travel the world (he’d said this with a Cheshire grin stained with dried blood, on his way out the door in 1956- the last time Zayn ever saw him), and Zayn had traveled a fair bit between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries before he settled in Bradford again, and Louis thought that maybe he was due another go around.

“It’s a whole different world out there,” Louis had told him the few times he returned to Bradford. “It changes each time I look. Be pretty swell if we could travel again like old times.” Then he had bumped his shoulder against Zayn’s, leaving out the part about how their travels between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries were the bloodiest decades their destinations had ever experienced.

That was fifty-nine years ago.

Zayn had traveled since then, more-so out of necessity than desire (one thing immortality hadn’t changed about him was the fact that he remained a homebody); “you can never stay in one place for too long or people will get suspicious and you’ll have to massacre the entire village,” Louis had told him in 1523: the year Zayn had been turned.

And maybe it was the sudden nostalgia for Louis he had developed, maybe it was because he’d been in Bradford again for the past eight years and he’s started getting too many compliments about being “remarkably ageless,” but Zayn had spread his map out on his wall and thrown a dart- ignored that it landed on South Dakota and booked tickets to New York.

* * *

 

**LATE AUGUST**

Zayn met him at Starbucks on Broadway, somewhere in Midtown that Zayn recognized more from muscle memory that visual. New York changed since the eighties. If Zayn had met someone like him in the eighties, someone wearing a sheer top with nearly all the buttons undone to display a _moth_ tattooed across his abdomen, Zayn would’ve seen his face on the news the following morning.

But it’s 2015 and it’s New York and as Louis had said all that time ago, _it’s a whole different world out there_.

“That’s a sick tattoo, mate,” a voice drawled in a thick English accent, immediately capturing Zayn’s attention. His eyes snapped up from his phone to find him- stupidly long legs and sporting a sheer tops with nearly all the buttons undone, using his straw to spoon whipped cream into his mouth.

His eyes were unbearably green, like Zayn had only ever seen in a forest by the sea in the seventeen hundreds.

“Which one,” Zayn said stupidly after a moment of silence and realizing that the boy’s- or should he say man?- heart had sped up a bit in his chest. Nervous.

Zayn’s response seemed to satiate him enough into a lopsided dimpled grin; Green Eyes took it as an invitation to occupy the seat across from him. He gestured towards Zayn’s arm, more a show of ink than skin, still smiling wildly. “All of ‘em! I’ve got quite a few of my own but I’ve always thought sleeves looked so dope.” That sounded weird with an English accent; Zayn suspected the bloke’s ought to have lived in New York for a bit.

“Like the moth?” Zayn pointed towards Green Eyes’ chest, keeping his tone amused. He hadn’t touched his drink yet.

Green Eyes rolled his eyes and made a show of sighing defeated before catching his straw between his teeth, chewing the poor thing and straining the plastic a light green. “It isn’t a bloody moth,” his voice held no malice, just amusement, and Zayn assumed that it was something he received often from his friends. He pulled his shirt open a bit wider, revealing the full detail on the moth- “Butterfly!”- and the intricate shading, line work, and symmetry that Zayn appreciated.

(zayn liked the swallows on green eyes’ collar better.)

“It hasn’t got a meaning, if that’s what you were going to ask next.” Green Eyes sat back up as he met Zayn’s eyes, damning the straw back between his teeth. “None of my tattoos really have meaning; they’re more a patchwork of ‘in the moments,’ you know?”

Definitely a fucking college kid. Zayn hadn’t heard anything so pretentious since ninety-four, when he was a visual arts major at Brown University. Zayn didn’t reply, instead taking the time to take a small vial of blood from his pocket and pour the contents into his drink, watching as Green Eyes’ brows furrowed and his lip twitched so quickly that if the world didn’t move at half-speed for Zayn, he would’ve missed it.

“Like this one,” Green Eyes rushed, shrugging his shirt off one shoulder and pointed at a small squiggle on his inner arm, after Zayn hadn’t said anything and merely nodded with amusement. Upon further inspection it wasn’t a squiggle at all but “a coat-hanger!”

“Why’ve you got a bloody coat hanger tattooed on your arm?” Zayn deadpanned.

Green Eyes grinned, all toothy and exuberant without any hint of sheepishness. “I was in a band my first year of uni called The Coat Hanger Abortions.”

…

“You called yourself The Coat Hanger Abortions?”

“Well, I call myself Harry, but my friend Cara thought it’d be a laugh if we had a rude name when we were an indie rock band.” Green Eyes- now formally known as Harry- explained. “It’s completely fucked up but that’s the laugh part, isn’t it?”

“What, taking a traumatic, terrifying, and fatal experience and using it for some sort of weird aesthetic edge?”

Harry nodded.

“You’re fucked, mate.”

Harry just grinned again and Zayn thought he looked a bit mental and maybe that was part of Harry’s charm, because Zayn’s mouth, lips pressed together in a completely dead and vaguely annoyed way, betrayed him and smiled back.

 

* * *

 

**MID SEPTEMBER**

“Think of it this way,” Zayn started, his fingers blackened with charcoal and leaving small oval smudges on his face and his clothes and Harry’s carpet whenever he touched any of them. “Nihilism isn’t necessarily the absence of belief- it’s simply the belief that in the grand scheme of things, nothing’s ever explained and nothing ever matters, so there isn’t a point making yourself miserable over anything.”

Harry scoffed from his spot on his bed, his eyes focused on the peach he was tossing in the air and catching again instead of _eating_ like a normal human being. But nothing about Harry was normal, was it? “Then why bother living?”

Zayn rolled his eyes, dragging the charcoal across his canvas and his finger following suit, smudging out the line where it got too sharp. “I didn’t say there isn’t a point in living. There just isn’t a point in most of the things everyone’s got their lungs inside out over.”

“Like?”

“Religion.”

“You don’t believe in religion?”

“I believe in stories and religion are all fantastic stories,” Zayn countered. Hearing himself speak sometimes, he wondered if his faith in Islam died along with his heartbeat in 1523. “I believe in passion, and I’ve never seen anyone as passionate as a person who believes in religion.”

He supposed much of what he believed died along with his heartbeat when he woke up hours after with a still heart and pounding head and pain in his gums where his new set of teeth ripped through.

Harry hummed in response, his lips pursing in that way Zayn now recognized as ponder. Zayn wasn’t sure whether Harry moved as slow as he did and spoke as slow as he did and existed in that leisurely haze or if the entire world did, and Zayn was travelling at the speed of light even when he blinked. Harry caught the peach again, this time holding it to his chest as his eyes glazed over with ponder and his shoulders tensed with ponder and his heartbeat thrummed, steady; Zayn rarely heard his heart change rhythm besides the day they met and when Harry drifted to sleep. His heart rate decreased so much more than anyone Zayn’s ever met and Zayn had to hold his fingers under Harry’s nose to see if he was still breathing.

“I believe in the Universe.” Harry turned on his side, looking down at Zayn.

(harry also believed in aliens.)

“The Universe.” Zayn repeated, urging Harry to go on.

He did. He sighed, biting at the inside of his cheek and he gathered his words. “It’s contradicting when I say it, but it isn’t when I think it. Like, I believe the Universe to be this massive energy, this… force, I guess. It’s not exactly living, but it’s some sort of magical that knows what it’s doing. I’m not saying everything happens for a reason, that’s bullshit, but I think that it isn’t a coincidence that humans are made of stardust.”

“And blood,” Zayn added.

“And blood. Stardust and blood.” Harry agreed, before he grinned again in that fucked up, mental way of his (that completely charming way of his). “Zed, how wicked is that? Stardust and blood. It’s like humanity’s some intense version of ambiguity. Like maybe you choose what you listen to: your stardust or your blood.”

“So what you’ve now discovered is that our thoughts and actions are influenced by our biological makeup, but in a fanciful way instead of actual science.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Harry drawled. “Fuck science.”

 

* * *

 

Zayn had been waiting for Harry against a wall outside the Tisch NYU campus. It was a routine they fell into on Wednesdays and Fridays, when Harry got out of class around five and Zayn got off his shift at a Barnes & Noble nearby (more so a job he took out of boredom- Zayn had more money than anyone in all of Chelsea, and the ability to compel humanity). They usually sat in a Starbucks and took the piss for an hour or so.

“Oh, what’s that?” Harry greeted, hands already reaching for Zayn’s thermos, which Zayn held out of his reach.

If he had a heart it would’ve beat angrily against his chest in panic.

“You’re underage.” Zayn stated instead, smiling in amusement when Harry’s smile fell as he watched Zayn take a sip from his thermos.

“I’m fucking English, Zed,” Harry sighed in annoyance. “I’m not underage.”

“Does this look like England?” Zayn gestured around them, to the sky-scrapers and yellow taxi cabs and the steady thrum of people and car horns and pollution suffocating them with every step- it all screamed New York City.

Harry rolled his eyes, snapping his gum in his teeth. Zayn knew if Harry didn’t think Zayn had some weird coffee and vodka blend in that thermos (an addiction of Harry’s, Zayn learned in the weeks knowing him) and knew that it was eighteen ounces of thirty-seven degree Celsius human blood, he’d be less keen on nicking the thermos. Zayn had compelled the doorman from his apartment building that morning; he’d bit into that man’s wrists and filled his thermos, patched him up and fed him a bit of Zayn’s own blood to speed up the healing process, and then wiped his memory of it altogether.

(you’re such a brat.)

“I’ve only got English tomorrow,” Harry continued after a moment of silence. He was speaking quickly. “I was going to hang out with Niall because he’s got this new girlfriend called Camila he wants me to meet, but I think they’re going to fuck instead because they haven’t stopped since they’ve met. And I know you’re probably busy doing adult shit and whatever, but I think it’d be cool if we went out together.”

“We were out together on Monday.” Zayn took a sip, careful to lick his lip clean of a bead of blood.

Harry didn’t say anything for a moment. And then another. “I like seeing you, you know. My mates at uni aren’t the same, and I can’t blame it on Americans because half of them aren’t even American. I think I think I think too much but so do you, so we should see each other more. Even if it’s meaningless in the grand scheme of things.”

Zayn glanced at him from the corner of his eye. Harry was looking at him; his face was a mix of both calm and anxious as he waited for a reply. Zayn could hear his heart pick up again. Zayn hadn’t any idea why Harry thought he was so bloody interesting- why some nineteen year old NYU student would rather text Zayn pictures of his rock collection than go to that frat party (the first Friday after they met), or invite Zayn over to his dorm when his roommate wasn’t in (nearly every other day), or go all the way to Brooklyn for an art gallery opening with Zayn instead of a rooftop party (Monday). Sure, Zayn could tell Harry liked him well enough and Zayn found him good company, but in comparison to this exciting life with exciting friends that Harry had and always spoke of, Zayn didn’t really get how he could fit into the picture. The most exciting thing about him was that he was dead. Harry didn’t know that.

“How nihilistic of you,” Zayn smirked. He ignored the pang of satisfaction he felt when Harry smiled at him in his fucked up, mental way (his charming way). “Fuck it, why don’t we?”

“We should go to MOMA.” Harry stated. Then, in a much more whimsical tone: “It’s my favorite place in the world.”

“If it’s your favorite place in the world, how could I say no? Maybe I’ll finally understand why you’re such a head case.”

 

* * *

 

If there was ever such a sight to behold as Harry Styles arguing the revolutionary of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans in modern art with another equally- if not more- pretentious college student, Zayn would throw a dollar at it.

“The only reason you think Andy Warhol is revolutionary is because someone of higher importance than you thought it and hung him on a wall. If that,” the pretentious college student’s hand shot out to point at the Warhol exhibit. “wasn’t hanging there, or if it was under another name, you would think otherwise.”

“The only reason you think otherwise is because you’ve got a taste for undermining everyone else’s abilities when they surpass you.” Harry retorted, slightly more pink in the face than Zayn had ever seen him. The crowd around the two was growing now- it wouldn’t be long before security came and escorted them out.

With each person that joined the crowd, Zayn’s attention the argument weakened. At first it was amusing- and it still was amusing- that Harry managed to accidentally pick a fight in over fucking Andy Warhol, but with the amount of elevated blood pressures and beating hearts idling to watch the two go at it, Zayn felt his annoyance grow. After nearly five hundred years he’d expect his tolerance to hunger to be higher. After nearly five hundred years he knew better than that- he’d seen starved vampires deep within the catacombs, heard their hushed moaning, saw the decaying, skeletal bodies too weak to move unless fed directly. That’s how he had rescued Louis’s girl from the catacombs. She’d been there nearly two hundred and fifty years; Eleanor was a far lovelier person upon draining the human they’d brought down of blood than Zayn had imagined.

It didn’t help that Zayn had grown far too accustomed to drinking blood straight from the vein- one of the few habits he and Louis didn’t share. Louis preferred his blood at room temperature and Eleanor preferred it like a smoothie, but Zayn had always loved it best when it came straight from its source. That wasn’t so hard to get in Bradford or Ireland or whatever small village Zayn chose to reside in. It wasn’t as easy in New York, when there was surveillance and people everywhere. He’d already compelled the landlords of his apartment building into disabling the security cameras. He’d compelled a few blood bags into his penthouse since. Getting rid of them was a little harder in a city that never slept.

There was blood pounding in his ears and Zayn recognized it as the steady drum of the woman beside him, holding a child in her arms. The little girl had the bluest eyes Zayn had ever seen. He could hear her heartbeat as well, could almost taste how sweet her blood would be- how _pure_ \- and the thought alone made him sneer. He never went after children, not after 1674.

“He didn’t do _anything_ revolutionary; he simply cheated and passed it off.”

Harry scoffed. “Your mother cheated. That’s why you look like the bloody milk man, bruv.”

Time moved in slow motion. Zayn saw the twitch in the pretentious college student’s frown, saw how his hands curled into fists at his side, felt the spike in his heartbeat of a nerve badly hit by Harry’s words. It both frightened and amazed Zayn how well Harry could read people- how he could pick apart your words and your movements and construct an outline of your entire life story and understand it, and how easily he could use it against you. Harry had told Zayn this himself over FaceTime (when he insisted he had to show Zayn how he prepared an all vegan dinner on a college budget). He’d said it flippantly. He’d expressed that that’s why he was everyone’s closest friend, because he was able to understand everybody, and he still didn’t know whether it was a blessing or a curse. Zayn hadn’t seen it in action before, not until this moment. Zayn hadn’t even been listening to the argument to recollect how Harry had analyzed his opponent’s words enough to pull _that_ out.

(his intelligence was outstanding.)

“Alright, yeah, that’s enough.” Zayn chimed, quickly stepping between the two. Too quickly, judging by the alarm on both their faces. “Warhol was a proper git but he threw wicked parties. Cheers, mate.”

Zayn grabbed Harry’s wrist, pulling him away despite protests from both parties that their argument was _far_ from over. He didn’t stop until they were halfway across the museum and Harry took the opportunity to break free from his grasp.

“That prat's in my art history class. I was winning,” Harry complained, his attention diverted to a painting to his left.

“You were being a dickhead.” Zayn responded. His voice hardly held anything but wonder. He hated it.

Harry shrugged beside him. The hint of a dimple in his cheek betrayed any facade he was trying to put up. “I was being passionate.”

“More passionate than a Christian on Easter.” Zayn agreed.

Harry looked at him.

He looked at Harry.

And that was all it took. They both grinned at each other and Zayn knew his face was mirroring the fondness Harry was beaming at him with his fucked up and charming Cheshire smile. In hindsight, this was the moment that Zayn should’ve heard warning bells. This was when he should have flipped the switch and turned his humanity off before his mind caught up with his heart.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

 

* * *

 

**LATE OCTOBER**

He didn’t dress up for Halloween. Zayn never understood the appeal of the holiday but perhaps it was because it didn’t necessarily exist when he was a child and by its creation, he’d outlived his siblings and their children and their children and their children; holidays lost their appeal on those who would never miss one.

What he did do was don a leather jacket and run his fingers through his hair. He set a cigarette between his lips and left his apartment, rolling his shoulders and feeling the bones crack. Each pop released another round of adrenaline within him because Halloween was always the best hunting day.

On Halloween, no one looked twice at a couple in the corner. No one batted an eye at blood. Zayn was always able to compel someone away with him and walk freely with blood on his lips afterwards. No one looked twice at his victim's’ wounds- he always chose people dressed in exceptionally bloody costumes that any extra wouldn’t stand out.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and reminded him to set it on ‘silent,’ though a quick look at the screen let him know it was Harry. He knew because Harry now had emojis next to his name- put there by himself, with help from Zayn- and no one else in his contact list had emojis (“which emoji do you associate with me?” “the alien.” “why?” “because you’re a space case with an alien tattoo on the inside of your lip, haz.” “i’m putting the pineapple too.” “okay.”). Zayn wasn’t the emoji type.

Still, it wasn’t like he erased them after Harry left to restore his contact list to uniform, lowercase names.

(he tried to backspace but his fingers betrayed him.)

“Fuck you guys, I’m going to the frat.” A girl ahead of him shouted, walking backwards in order to flip her friends off. They were all laughing.

She was dressed as a zombie. A perfectly bloody zombie.

She was perfect.

 

* * *

 

Harry found him later, moments after he erased that girl’s memory and pushed her off in the opposite direction of him, with blood still running down his chin and staining his shirt.

Or rather, _Niall_ , dressed as a devil, found him as he stepped out of a bar with Harry and friends in tow, dancing to ‘Uptown Funk’ as the music carried out. “Oi! Who’d you kill for that t-shirt?” He shouted at Zayn. Then he laughed at his own joke.

“Zayn!” Harry squealed upon seeing him, immediately gravitating towards him. Zayn could tell he’d had enough to get him buzzed.

“How do you know Lauren?” Niall asked, looking over Zayn’s shoulder at the far retreating figure of the girl he had fed off of. He cupped his hands together like a megaphone. “Oi! Jauregui! Where are you headed off to?”

If Zayn’s heart worked, it’d be pounding wildly enough against his chest that it’d break his ribs. Zayn turned in time to see the girl turn as well, flipping her long, black hair over her shoulder and walking back towards them. To his relief, her eyes held absolutely no recollection when she looked at Zayn.

“The NYU frat!” She shouted back, voice hoarse.

“Is Camila going?” Niall responded, earning a thumbs down in response before the girl, Lauren, turned and continued.

“How’d you get in there?” Zayn turned his attention towards Harry, pointing at the clearly twenty-one and over club.

“Cara got us fakes.” Harry grinned as Cara, a blonde girl behind him dressed as a skimpy angel (probably matching with Niall), shouted “So _you’re_ Zayn!” and raced towards him as well- as quickly as her four inch heels would allow.

(harry just had to smile at him like that and he was relaxed.)

“I’ve heard so much about you!” She grinned and Zayn liked her already (later, Harry would say that Zayn could sense her aura and that it glowed white). She then stepped closer to him, pushing her hair back to reveal the back of her ear where a tiny coat hanger tattoo sat.

“You’re _that_ Cara,”

“I’m _that_ Cara.”

“Does everyone here know Zayn except me?” A man said from beside Niall, who was (unsuccessfully) trying to start two-man conga line. He was dressed as a pimp. He extended his hand towards Zayn for a shake. Zayn had to wipe his hand on his pants before he could. “Name’s Nick, but you might’ve heard Harry call me Grimmy instead.”

“You look a lot more posh than I imagined with a name like ‘Grimmy.’” He got a laugh out of the group for that one. Humanity.

“This tosser’s the only one who calls me that.” Nick flicked Harry in the ear on ‘tosser.’

“It’s unique!” Harry shouted, covering both his ears from any further attacks. Then he turned his fucked up, mental smile on Zayn (his charming smile on Zayn). “Do you like my costume, Z?”

Zayn hadn’t noticed before- too preoccupied paying attention to everyone else and acting like the blood all over him was costume blood- but Harry was speaking with a slight lisp. Because he had very convincing and believable fangs on his canine teeth. Because he was dressed as a vampire.

“We match!” Harry cheered, pointing at the fake blood covering himself and the real blood over Zayn.

Zayn stared at him for a second. He could feel his mouth twitch, barely noticeable unless you were looking for it.

Harry’s smile turned a bit weird then.

(had he been looking for it?)

 

* * *

 

**NOVEMBER**

They hardly saw each other in November. Harry had finals at the end of the month and spent all his time in the library or his bed.

(zayn ignored the way his veins carried fire and his heart burned because of it.)

Harry did, however, snapchat him constantly- his subway commute, the stack of papers and books acting as The Wall (because he knew Zayn was a Game of Thrones fan), his Saturday morning jog through Central Park- after forcefully adding himself by nicking Zayn’s phone and running off to the bathroom with it. He’d also gotten a few snapchats from Lauren Jauregui, the girl he’d bloody _fed from_ , after Harry had taken the liberty to add his own contact list to Zayn’s snapchat list. He also FaceTimed Zayn for his last few minutes of consciousness each night.

(harry didn’t _make_ zayn sing the pokemon theme song to him as a lullaby, but zayn won’t ever admit that.)

Zayn also woke up one morning to an email from Harry. Print-out tickets to a The 1975 show at Terminal Five in December.

(he emailed back ‘yes’ even if harry didn’t properly ask and zayn didn’t fancy them all too much.)

 

* * *

 

**EARLY DECEMBER**

 

When you walk the earth five hundred years, the first fifty are unbearably slow as you exist in an inter-worldly realm quick enough to break the sound barrier. Then you get used to it, but even Manhattan seems like an opiate haze. To put it simply, when you can see everything coming towards you at half speed, it becomes very hard to be surprised.

But Louis Tomlinson was rather good at hiding in your blind spot, wasn’t he?

“You’re here.” Zayn stared, eyes wide and features contorted in bewilderment. He looked like the shocked emoji that Harry sent him when Zayn said he didn’t like morning yoga.

(maybe he would’ve liked it more if harry had done it naked, like he said he did in his own room.)

“I’m here.” Louis repeated with far, far more enthusiasm than Zayn had. As though it hadn’t been nearly six decades since they’d last seen each other. He had a duffel slung over one shoulder and his hair was longer than it had been in 1956, pushed across his forehead and long instead of slicked back. But it was a different time.

Louis looked at him expectantly until Zayn stepped aside. Louis gave him a curious look when he stepped through the doorway, immediately turning once Zayn shut the door behind them. “What, you haven’t compelled someone to sign your lease for you and make this place vampire proof?”

“Didn’t find the need to,” Zayn shrugged. “No one’s recognized me in decades.”

“Yeah, you might want to do that now that I’m here, mate,” Louis suggested, walking through Zayn’s apartment like it was his own. He found the extra bedroom with ease as well, throwing his duffel down and turning around to clap his hands together. “So! I’m fucking hungry; haven’t fed since last night. How about you and I grab a bite?”

It still amazed Zayn how Louis would always make everything sounds so innocent. So fucking _human_ , as if ‘grabbing a bite’ really did mean sitting down somewhere for grilled cheese sandwiches like he did with Harry. Like it didn’t mean playing some twisted game of cat and mouse with a random target- stalking, scaring, hunting them, until ultimately draining them of blood- where he and Zayn were the cats. Louis always said that fear made the blood taste sweeter.

“I’ve got plans tonight, actually.” Zayn said. “Maybe another time.”

“ _Plans_? With who?”

And then Plans knocked on the door.

 

* * *

 

It was a disaster.

Harry and Louis were _getting along_.

Louis had introduced himself as an old friend of Zayn and Harry had smirked and said “I didn’t know Zayn had any friends,” and that might as well have gone down in fucking history as the moment Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles became friends. They’d walked ahead of Zayn, bumping shoulders as they did, talking about Louis’s travels across eastern and western Europe and into Asia with Eleanor (Louis acting as if his adventures took place in the past two years since he ‘graduated uni’ instead of the past fifty-nine years), and how Harry didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life except see the world, and then they started exchanging embarrassing stories about Zayn all the way to the venue (where Louis compelled his way in) and Zayn wished he had a stake right then and there to stab into his own heart.

(or louis’, if he kept smiling at harry like that.)

“Have you heard of The 1975?” Harry asked, his arms folded on the stage, cradling his head.

“I know the singer, actually.” Louis responded.

Harry’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when he looked at Zayn for confirmation. Zayn shrugged in response, “I haven’t heard of this.”

“I’ll introduce you guys after the set. You’d like him, Zayn.” Louis smirked at him. “He’s a lot like us.”

Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

The lead singer of The 1975 was a bloody vampire. And now because of Zayn and because of Louis and because of The 1975, Harry was unknowingly being put into a world of the undead like a gazelle in a lion’s den.

 

* * *

“I got a plane in the middle of the night, don’t you mind?” Matty (the leader singer of The 1975, Zayn learned) sang. He was sat on the edge of the stage, hair covering half his face and mic pressed up against his lips, a bottle of wine in the other hand.

“Reckon that’s not wine.” Zayn felt the insinuation deep in his bones, catching the sly smile Louis gave him.

“I nearly killed somebody, don’t you mind, don’t you mind?”

(would harry mind?)

Harry had been quite the show the entire concert. He had been dancing, shouting the words until his voice went raw, grinning wildly at Zayn in that fucked up, mental way of his (that charming way of his), mouthing why the songs had meaning to him so closely in Zayn’s ear that his lips brushed Zayn’s skin with every other vowel and now? He was silent. Harry’s hands were clasped together pressed against his mouth, his eyes fixated on Matty Healy, slightly swaying. Zayn heard his heartbeat, slow, and his breathing, slower, and Harry truly was a sight to behold. From the lights and the band and Matty Healy downing blood from his wine bottle during every instrumental break, from Louis nudging him with raised eyebrows, there wasn’t anything else in the room that Zayn found more interesting than Harry.

(he was completely, completely fucked.)

“I love you, don’t you mind, don’t you mind.”

Later, after they’ve met The 1975 and Harry had exchanged numbers with Matty Healy, after he had gushed to Louis afterwards, after Louis had gone to bed, Harry would sit across from Zayn on Zayn’s bed in one of Zayn’s old shirts and say, “‘Me’ is my favorite song by them. I heard it last year when I’d bought the album on a whim, when I was home for summer hols and driving up to Blackpool to meet up with my mates. It was night and the song started and it was the perfect song that night. You know how the world gets too real sometimes? And you become self-aware? I was having one of those nights The Universe got a bit too much and I was thinking of everything and it came on and I was still thinking of everything but I was also completely at peace with everything, yeah? I accepted the fact that one day I’ll die and so will everyone else, and we’ll live among the stars and the void.”

(for you, i’d steal the stars.)

Even later, when Zayn had gone to sleep, Harry would be next to him. He wouldn’t know that his stirring pulled Zayn out of sleep and that Zayn was stirring on the edges of consciousness. He’d say, very quietly, “I saw you looking at me.”

Moments later, he would say: “I don’t mind.”

* * *

 

“Where’d you get that ring?” Zayn asked slowly, a week later, as he saw Harry approaching him with two hot chocolates and his friends from the NYU cafeteria.

If he had a living heart, it would be beating frantically in his ears.

The ring on Harry’s finger looked archaic. It was silver, pure silver, with a moonstone in the center as the silver broke off into intricate patterns. It absolutely reeked of witch’s magic, much like the ring on Zayn’s third finger, and Zayn knew immediately that it was a daylight ring. But where did Harry get a daylight ring?

“Oh, this?” Harry said innocently once Zayn had taken his drink; he lifted his hand to more closely inspect the jewelry. “It’s my mate Liam’s. He said I could borrow it- this too.” He fished a necklace out from under his scarf and jacket, holding it out for Zayn to look at. “The necklace is his girlfriend’s, though. Her name’s Sophia.”

“Sophia!” Camila shouted suddenly, holding her pencil in the air like a sword. Niall, Cara, and Lauren followed suit.

“All hail the Vodka Queen!” Lauren continued.

They all proceeded to mime taking a shot.

“If Liam was here, he’d murder us for that,” Niall laughed, nudging Zayn’s side.

Zayn barely managed a forced smile in return at the inside joke he didn’t understand.

“Liam can’t even kill a fucking spider,” Nick scoffed. “He always has to trap it in a cup and set it free outside.”

Zayn didn’t dare touch the necklace. It reeked of vervain, a vampire’s weakness. If Zayn touched it his hand would burn (even if Zayn had ingested vervain every day for two hundred years at Louis’s demand to build up a tolerance). Vervain not only protected Harry from any vampire that came within three feet of him, but it protected him from vampire compulsion. It meant that Harry had a vampire on his side, whether he knew it or not.

“It’s cool.” Zayn said quietly.

Harry looked at him funny when he didn’t try and look at it more closely.

(why was he looking at him like that?)

* * *

 

**MID DECEMBER**

 

“Mate, can I have a word?” Louis asked one morning, looking up from his bowl of cereal and blood. Zayn was sat on the floor against the fridge, a joint between his lips and a bowl of chips and blood dip beside him. They didn’t have to eat actual food- they just liked the taste.

Zayn blew smoke in Louis’s direction. “You leaving again?”

“No, actually. I quite like it here.” Louis looked absolutely mental saying that through a bloody grin. He stirred his spoon around his bowl. “I wanted to talk about Harry.”

…

“What about Harry?” Zayn asked. He hated how defensive his voice had gotten.

Louis had noticed it too, the twat. He grinned at Zayn and pointed his spoon at him. “You fancy him. I was going to ask if you did, but you nearly ripped my head off for saying his name just then so I’m taking that as my ‘yes.’”

“ _What_?! I don’t fancy him, mate.” Zayn sputtered. His cheeks were probably stupidly red.

Louis rolled his eyes, pushing away from the island. He grabbed his bowl, tipping the blood-and-cereal-dust contents into his mouth as he walked over to Zayn. He leaned against the counter and oh, he looked like he did in the fifties for a moment, making something catch in Zayn’s throat. “Still as thick as ever, yeah?” Louis sighed. “When you look at him I can hear your breath stop, even if your thick brain hasn’t been letting you know you do that.”

“Bullshit.”

“Alright, dickhead, so explain me this.” Fuck, Louis’ started sounding like a chav. Zayn forgot how bad his temper was. “If you don’t like him then why haven’t you bitten him? Why haven’t you compelled him? Used him as your blood bag? Fucked him?”

“Christ, Louis, shut it!”

“When’s the last time you acted like this towards any human, Zayn?” Louis demanded, though Zayn knew that Louis knew the answer. “1741. Perrie Edwards, the governor's daughter in the colonies.”

Zayn didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, and how did that fucking end, Louis?”

Louis didn’t say anything. He just stared at Zayn and Zayn stared right back, both red faced with their jaws set. They knew exactly how it ended. The Edwards girl couldn’t keep her mouth shut and the city came after Zayn and Louis with wooden stakes. They had to massacre the city’s entire population.

Perrie Edwards included.

 

* * *

 

Louis had become a staple in their lives. He had officially moved in with Zayn and by doing so moved in with Harry as well. He’d been introduced to Nick and Cara, neither of whom he got along with, and Niall, who he got on with so well the two might as well be brothers. With Louis present, Zayn hunted more frequently and the freezer in the spare room was stocked with blood bags stolen from hospitals or water bottles filled with blood from whoever’s palms they’d slit (Zayn hadn’t allowed Louis to kill anyone- not with the knowledge that Harry’s got a vampire friend called Liam lurking around).

Of course, that all went down the drain on December Fifteenth: Harry’s first day of winter vacation.

* * *

 

**DECEMBER FIFTEENTH**

“I’m coming,” Zayn shouted around a nearly empty blood bag, squeezing the last of it into his mouth and tossing the bag on his way towards the front door. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and peered through the peephole.

It was Harry.

(he usually says when he’ll come?)

Zayn opened the door with a smile, but Harry pushed right passed him with his arms crossed and his lip caught between his teeth. Zayn could smell the tension and anxiety in him. He kicked the door shut behind him, looking at Harry quizzically as Harry paced the length of his living room.

“You alright, mate?” Zayn asked slowly.

Harry stopped pacing and looked at him. And looked, and looked, and looked. And when he was done looking, he shut his eyes for a moment (or five, in Zayn’s twisted perception) and exhaled, long and steady, before he faced Zayn again.

“I know what you are, Zayn.”

His voice wasn’t shaky and it wasn’t scared. It was firm, strong, and everything Zayn didn’t expect in his anxiety daydreams that this conversation would ever happen.

“What are you on about?” Play stupid. That was always the first option.

(murder was usually the second.)

(usually.)

Harry scoffed. It sounded painful, like he choked back laughter and his green eyes paid for it. They looked absolutely mad. “Don’t, alright? Don’t, like, fucking insult me like that. I know you’re a vampire.”

A beat.

Then another.

On the third, Zayn was across the room and cornering Harry against the wall, staring straight into his green eyes. “You won’t remember this conversation. You-”

“You can’t compel me!” Harry shouted, struggling under Zayn’s grip. “I’ve been drinking vervain since September!”

Zayn’s brows furrowed. “You’ve known since _September_?” he growled, tightening his grip on Harry’s wrists.

Harry cried out in pain and he immediately let go.

“No! I just thought,” Harry paused to lick his lips. Consider his words. “You’re not very good at hiding it from me, Zayn. I had my suspicions- it was just things you said, the way your face reacted to some things. I know you think you’re good at hiding everything and maybe you are, but not from me. You should know better than anyone that I can read everyone like a book.”

He was right. Fuck, he was right. Harry told him from the start that he was intuitive, that he had this weird insight, and Zayn had seen it full force in MOMA that day those months ago. Harry was intelligent and Zayn made the mistake of thinking that Harry could understand people, but maybe he didn’t count because he stopped being people nearly five hundred years ago.

“Your face when you saw my Halloween costume, I _knew_ it. I knew it!” Harry continued. “And after a while I figured out it wasn’t bloody drink you had in your thermos- it was blood. And you reacted to the daylight ring and my vervain necklace like I had just brought you a dead bird and told you to eat it.”

Zayn couldn’t say anything. His mouth was dry and his blood was pumping through his veins like he had just ran a marathon. His mind was recollecting every moment with Harry, analyzing Harry’s every word and look towards him for any hint that Harry knew for as long as he did. He didn’t know what to say, how to react.

“I could kill you, you know.” Zayn said finally, eyes going black and his fangs emerging. “Right now, right here.” He tapped at Harry’s pressure point on his neck. It was beating wildly.

“No you can’t.”

“ _Yes I can!_ ” Zayn snarled, shoving Harry’s shoulders before stalking off. His trembling hands grabbed at his hair.

“But you won’t!” Harry retorted, coming up behind him and turning Zayn around harshly by his shoulder. Harry’s eyebrows nearly met, his green eyes were red and brimmed with the threat of tears and his lower lip was trembling. He looked like a child. He looked like innocence. He looked like temptation.

Zayn wasn’t a god-fearing man, but even feeling the pads of Harry’s fingers against his bare shoulder felt like sin.

“You won’t,” Harry repeated, voice sure and quiet. “because you love me.”

“No,” Zayn started shaking his head. It hurt to look at Harry.

“Yes you do!” Harry shoved him back this time. “You love me! You fucking love me, Zayn, and I love you too!”

Zayn stared at Harry.

Harry stared at Zayn.

Looking back on this moment, they’ll fight about who moved first. Zayn will say he did, and Harry will disagree- they moved together, like binary stars within their own constellation. Because Harry always loved the Universe and comparing everything to stars, especially Zayn.

(secretly, zayn will agree. they moved together. they always moved together.)

Then they were kissing with Harry’s fists balled in Zayn’s shirt and Zayn’s hands in his hair and so much fucking tongue and teeth and it wasn’t even proper kissing, really, it wasn’t. It was a lot of spit from Harry’s end and a lot of lip-sucking from Zayn’s. But it was perfect, in it’s own fucked up, mental, charming way.

“I love you,” Zayn breathed around Harry’s lip, his hand grabbing at Harry’s ass and his other gripping the back of Harry’s neck like he was scared if he let go, Harry would leave.

(he was scared.)

“I love you.” Harry repeated, closing his lips around Zayn’s.

He tugged at Zayn’s pants.

He ran his fingers through the hair on Zayn’s stomach.

Zayn nodded.

They fucked like that, on Zayn’s couch in his living room with their clothes strewn around them. Zayn opened Harry easily, swallowing his moans when he had finally entered him, fucking him slow into the couch. He was truly a sight to behold. All _‘yeah, yeah, yeah’_ s and _‘i love you’_ s, rolling his hips to match Zayn, baring his neck to Zayn with complete, unwavering trust and Zayn loved him. _Fuck_ , he loved him.

Matty Healy be damned.

Liam be damned.

New York City be damned.

Zayn loved him.

 

* * *

 

**NOW**

 

“What do you think happens when we die?” Harry whispers. His breath tickled Zayn’s bare chest, warm like the breeze from the ocean.

Zayn’s staring at the night sky above them. It looks like the sky did back in his time, before light pollution and real pollution fogged up the atmosphere like a frosty window pane on a cold day (only the sky didn’t have anyone to tuck their sleeve over their palm and wipe the blanket of pollution away like windows did). They’re in Indonesia now, two years later doing volunteer work like Harry’s wanted to do since he found direction.

“I was dead for a few hours, nothing really happened.” Zayn shrugs. Still ridiculously nihilistic.

“That doesn’t count because you were only _technically_ dead until you woke up to be more dead in a supernatural state.” Harry says easily and Zayn laughs at how petty he sounds. The sound fades when Harry sits up, his wild (long) hair tied back from his face with a bandana and enough light from the stars and the moon to let Zayn faintly see the determined look he’s being shot. Fuck, he’s beautiful. “I mean, when I die. What’s going to happen then?”

“You’re not going to die,” Zayn walks his fingers up Harry’s forearm.

“But if I did.” Harry doesn’t forget that he told Zayn he wants to turn someday and “suck your cock for the eternity.”

Zayn ponders for a moment, recollecting Islam and Buddhism and all the religions he studied since he turned looking for an answer to why he did. He comes up short. “I think that’s meant to be a mystery. I think you encounter the void, but what comes after I’ll never know. Anything’s possible, I guess, if vampires exist.”

Harry rolls his eyes. He straddles Zayn’s hips, kicking sand fucking everywhere and on the blanket in the process, only to tilt his head back and stare straight up into the Universe.

(for you, i’d steal the stars.)

“You know what I think?”

“Something entirely too positive.”

Harry laughs then and Zayn sees his Adam's apple bob with the sound and he wants to kiss it. He kisses his fingertips and then presses them to Harry’s throat.

“I think you do encounter the void. I think you’re existing in this vast nothingness and you don’t see anything, but then you do. This one point in the distance of light. Like, maybe that’s the light at the end of the tunnel that everyone always talks about, you know? And then that pinprick of light breaks off into thousands and then millions of little points of light, like _that_.” He points up towards the sky scattered with stars. “But it’s different. It’s like, millions of stars and nebulae but it’s not the same as it is right now, and you could feel it in your heart that it’s not the same and that’s how you know you’re dead and not just star-gazing.

And you’re moving towards the center of it, leaving the void behind and being enveloped in this magnificent beauty, right? And it feels different because as you get closer to the center you feel like you’re joining some kind of universal consciousness, like you’re part of something greater. A being made up of the thoughts, emotions, and experiences of everyone and everything that has ever lived.”

…

“And then what?”

Harry sighs, still staring up at the sky. Then he looks down, kisses his fingertips and presses them to Zayn’s mouth.

“I think that even if you and I were pinpoints of light in that ‘something greater,’ even if we were particles in space, we’d always find our way back to each other.”

(you’ve already stolen the stars. when i touch your skin, i feel the universe in your veins.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: "idk i just want vampire zayn who has been around for ages and is really LONELY because like everyone he's around is so happy and has a ~mate~ or whatever (i'm so not picky) and then he meets cute lil harry who has a big heart and a big smile and is totally innocent and doesn't realize vampires can be SCARY but zayn isn't scary he's just misunderstood and harry is totally pining over him and doesn't realize zayn is pining for hiM TOO i just love this idea. take it and run with it if you do pick it."
> 
> Thank you so much for beta who stayed up on Skype with me reading every part of this fic as I sent her them, and telling me that she wants a sequel fic from Harry's perspective, and then another one after that to find out why Eleanor was trapped in the catacombs. 
> 
> I sincerely hope you all enjoyed this story, especially trishapocalypse (did I do your prompt justice?).


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